Thursday, May 09, 2013

Howard Hughes and the 1964 Zamora UFO Sighting

As many of you know, we have presented the hypothesis that Howard Hughes' Aircraft Company (Hughes Toolco), in providing satellite technology for U.S. Military agencies, under the direction of the C.I.A.'s front organization, Raven Industries, tested a space vehicle in New Mexico, near Socorro, that Police Officer Lonnie Zamora espied and created the noted 1964 Socorro UFO sighting.

(Our many ruminations about this can be found here, at this blog, and others.)

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Howard Hughes:

In 1948 Hughes created a new division of the company, the Aerospace Group. Two Hughes engineers, Simon Ramo and Dean Wooldridge, had new ideas on the packaging of electronics to make complete fire control systems. Their MA-1 system combined signals from the aircraft's radar with an analog computer to automatically guide the interceptor aircraft into the proper position for firing missiles. At the same time other teams were working with the newly formed US Air Force on air-to-air missiles, delivering the AIM-4 Falcon, then known as the F-98. The MA-1/Falcon package, with several upgrades, was the primary interceptor weapon system in the US for many years, lasting into the 1980s. Ramo and Wooldridge, having failed to reach an agreement with Howard Hughes regarding management problems, resigned in September 1953. They founded the Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation, later to join Thompson Products to form the Thompson-Ramo-Wooldridge Corporation based in Canoga Park with Hughes leasing space for nuclear research programs (present day West Hills (Canoga Park).[6] The company became TRW in 1965, another aerospace company and a major competitor to Hughes Aircraft.
A 1962 filed Patent (awarded in 1966) for Hughes and The Aerospace Corporation began the work toward Stealth technology.

38 Comments:

Before commenting on the patent and leaving myself open for a beating, I'll be clear that I'm nowhere near to being an expert on radar or how the angular cross-section of a 'spacecraft' minimises radar returns.

On first impressions, the patent appears to be presenting a design that's theoretical without having any material reality.

It describes an ideal design for a 'spacecraft' that would (in theory) register as a small object on any tracking radars. As such, the concept is similar to modern age stealth technology.

I'm not seeing any reference to how this 'spacecraft' would be propelled. It's 1962 and they are clear in referring to spacecraft and not satellite. The distinction suggests a capability of directed motion beyond that of satellites.

So I wonder how the craft would find itself '500 miles' away in space? What means of propulsion? Also, where are the subsequent vehicles conforming to this ideal configuration?

As a “rocket scientist”, I cannot stress enough how silly is your hypothesis that what Zamora saw was the flight of a clandestine, rocket-powered moon-lander prototype. There are multiple, independent reasons for rejecting this poorly founded idea, and all of them are based on “rocket science” or, as it’s more correctly termed, “aerospace engineering”. If desired, I could go into them at length, but for brevity I will mention only two, which should be dispositive.

They are:1) The object Zamora described did some things that rockets never do.2) The object Zamora described did not do some things that rockets always do.

If that doesn’t settle the matter for you, I don’t know what would.

With regard to point (1). The exhaust plume of a rocket motor exits the nozzle with a speed of around 6700 mph, or more. The speed of the exhaust gas moving in one direction is what generates thrust in the opposite direction. When operating inside an atmosphere (which Zamora’s object clearly was) that speed is many, many times the speed of sound. Therefore, a rocket motor generating thrust is generating noise. No rocket generates thrust without noise. Zamora described the object as sometimes flying in a nearly horizontal direction (at a slight slope up or down, actually) sometimes descending in a slow (apparently controlled) landing, sometimes ascending in a controlled liftoff, and sometimes hovering. During all those maneuvers, thrust is required (in varying amounts) or the object would have either been on the ground or falling quickly in an uncontrolled manner toward it. Therefore there should have been (lots and lots of) noise whenever the object was airborne, if it was a rocket motor generating the lift. But there wasn't. Zamora definitively described the times when the object in flight was and was not making noise, and described the transition between those periods.

With regard to point (2). Because of the high speed of the exhaust plume, a rocket motor firing in proximity to a sandy desert surface always moves some of the unconsolidated surface material around and kicks up a massive dust cloud. When the rocket motor is pointing directly at the ground and in close proximity to it (as in landing, takeoff, and low altitude hover), the exhaust plume actually cuts into the surface and excavates large amounts of loose material. We have tested this and observed it many times in the space program and even quantified it. A rocket motor is a pretty damn good excavation tool. Knowledge about this is necessary for designing rocket powered vehicles to land on Mars, for example, where there would be no prepared landing pad. At the following url, you can see a picture of the Martian surface underneath the Phoenix mission Mars lander where the rocket motors have moved away several centimeters of surface material (http://arstechnica.com/science/2011/01/phoenix-lander-blast-away-martian-dirt-uncover-new-way-to-dig/).

The power of the rocket motors of a putative human crewed lunar lander prototype would have been hundreds if not thousands of times more powerful than those of the Phoenix lander.

The effects of rocket plume excavation (holes and trenches cut in the ground, soil scattered radially away from the landing point, etc.) would have been impossible to overlook by the investigators who arrived later. Also, the dust cloud would almost certainly have still been hanging in the air if it was really only a minute or two between the time Zamora saw the thing lift off and the next witness arrived.

Seriously, Rich, I’m not making this stuff up and it’s not just my opinion. It was not a rocket powered vehicle that Zamora saw.

"Zamora described the object as sometimes flying in a nearly horizontal direction (at a slight slope up or down, actually) sometimes descending in a slow (apparently controlled) landing, sometimes ascending in a controlled liftoff, and sometimes hovering."

No he didn't. Zamora's original report is all over the internet. Find it, quote it directly and link to it.

"But we haven't proposed that the thing seen by Zamora was rocket propelled."

Then how was it propelled? By a jet engine? That doesn't change the problem. Consider a Harrier jet. It still kicks up dust, digs holes in the sand, and makes a heck of a racket when it's generating lift.

" have read many different accounts of Zamora's sighting over the years from different authors."

That's the problem, these second-hand accounts are infested with dramatic license and errors. Zamora's first hand, original report is available on many websites, not quite half way down the page on this one. The case has been badly polluted over the years and Zamora in no way, shape or form said he saw what you think he did.

Part 1OK Frank, I will excerpt from Zamora's statement that you referred me to and take his comments in sequence. Let’s take it from the point where he has finally made it to the top of the hill and the object is first in sight:

“… After got to top, traveled slowly on the gravel road westward. Noted nothing for a while . . . for possibly 15 or 20 seconds…Suddenly noted a shiny type object to south about 150 to 200 yards. It was off the road. … Thought some kids might have turned over. Saw two people in white coveralls very close to the object. ….At this time I started moving my car towards them quickly, with idea to help. Had stopped about only a couple seconds. Object was like aluminum -- it was whitish against the moss background, but not chrome. ..Then paid attention to road while drove towards scene. Radioed to sheriff's office…Stopped car, was still talking on radio, started to get out, mike fell down, reached back to put up mike, then replaced radio mike in slot, got out of car and started to go down to where knew the object (car) was. …Hardly turned around from car, when heard roar … very loud roar …Not like a jet -- knows what jets sound like. Started low frequency quickly, then…rose in frequency (higher tone) and in … At same time as roar, saw flame. Flame was under the object. Object was starting to go straight up -- slowly up. … Thought, from roar, it might blow up. …As soon as saw flame and heard roar, turned away, ran away from object but did turn head towards object. … As roar started, it was still on or near ground. … kept running to north, with car between me and object. Glanced back couple of times. Noted object to rise to about level of car, about 20 to 25 feet guess… I guess I had run about 25 feet when I glanced back and saw the object level with the car and it appeared about directly over the place where it rose from….I stopped because I did not hear the roar. …I had planned to continue running down the hill. .. Being that there was no roar, I looked up, and I saw the object going away from me, in a southwest direction. … At end of roar was this whine and the whine lasted maybe a second. There was complete silence about the object. That's when I lifted up my head and saw the object going away from me….It appeared to go in straight line and at same height -- possibly 10 to 15 feet from ground, … Object was traveling very fast. It seemed to rise up, and take off immediately across country. ….As I was calling Nep, I could still see the object. The object seemed to lift up slowly, and to "get small" in the distance very fast. It seemed to just clear the Box Canyon … It had no flame whatsoever as it was traveling over the ground, and no smoke or noise.”

Part 2So, the object was sitting on the ground emitting "flame" and a noise so loud it scared him into running away. He was explicitly able to distinguish the noise from that of a jet engine. Then it rose straight up, very slowly, still with noise audible and “flame” visible. When it reached an altitude about 10 to 15 feet above his level of the desert floor, the noise and flame stopped completely, yet the object had transitioned from slow vertical flight into essentially constant altitude flight over the desert floor. That means that at some point in there, its rate of climb went to zero. From a propulsion standpoint, that is the same as hovering, even if it is only for a fraction of a second. Also, because the terrain was rising slightly toward the horizon, as the object moved along, it had to pick up a slight rate of climb.

The point is that from the time he saw the object lift off until it vanished in the distance, the thrust-to-weight ratio never could have gone to a value less than 1. If it had been a rocket, jet, or rotor that was generating the thrust, its noise could not have gone away.

I assume your point is that he never claimed to see the object descend and land. That’s true, but it does not change the argument that for the portion of the trajectory that he could see—liftoff and transition to forward flight—the object did not display the physical and acoustic signature of a rocket, jet, or rotor powered craft.

It was making noise but not flying nor excavating the surface it was sitting on, and then it was flying but not emitting any noise or “flame”.

I don't see the part where Officer Zamora loses his glasses at the time the "object" is departing.

When I brought this up at UFO UpDates back in 2004, a small imbroglio erupted, mostly because Dr. Rudiak (an optometrist or optician) hadn't noted that aspect of Zamora's testimony, which seemed to others a severe dereliction, since without his glasses, Zamora could not determine details that he provided for the time he was without glasses.

I confirmed that with Mrs. Zamora a few years ago.

(I had talked with her in 1964, too.)

This doesn't detract from Officer Zamora's overall testimony.

But if one is recreating his testimony, it's important to note the absence of glasses from the point where he was running back to his police car, until the "object' disappeared.

"That’s true, but it does not change the argument that for the portion of the trajectory that he could see—liftoff and transition to forward flight—the object did not display the physical and acoustic signature of a rocket, jet, or rotor powered craft.

It was making noise but not flying nor excavating the surface it was sitting on, and then it was flying but not emitting any noise or “flame”."

That's because it was a balloon with some noisemakers and pyrotechnics tossed into the mix.

Rich, I remember this coming up before and think I held a similar position to now. Whatever Zamora saw, his description didn't sound much like anything of ours - then or now. Larry's strengthening that position with his comments that the object didn't behave like anything of ours - then or now; at least nothing that used chemical rocketry/propulsion.

Furthermore, if we were to collect the posts on this topic from the past year (or two) and weigh them up, we'd have to suspend judgement on lack of evidence. The balloon explanation has been held up like only an idiot can doubt it and yet it requires a lot of faith and fudging in my opinion. Terrestrial prototypes are even less likely than the balloon idea.

That isn't said as a cop-out and isn't to say that little interlopers were forced to flee in their flying machine. I haven't read an explanation that makes enough sense to favour over others.

As you know, this is one of my favorite UFO "events" -- Zamora was a good witness, other egg-shaped UFOs were seen, elsewhere, in the time frame (La Madera for one), and the vicissitudes of the investigations (many) and rather thorough.

I am not a fan of the hoax explanation, although Anthony Bragalia (and Frank Stalter) have gathered interesting circumstantial evidence.

But the prosaic elements of the sighting -- the rocket-like propulsion, the white cover-all beings (apparently examining their craft), the not quite exotic departure of the "object" -- make it too terrestrial-like to example an extraterrestrial visitation.

It remains an open question, sure, and I keep returning to it, like an itch, hoping someone might finally resolve the incident, one was or another.

I'm not married to the Hughes conjecture, but Hughes was fooling around with strange ideas and prototypes in that area and time-frame.

(And hen we have that old guy confirming, in a video we've put online, our hypothesis. I find it hard to believe that old guys lie so perfectly about things that don't really matter to them.)

The description of flame as a interpretation based on matching by association is the chief feature of the ambivalence surrounding the root cause of the archivist's inability to file this with confidence. It could be a plasma mistaken for flame or some similar effect of superheating resulting in a coronal effect. The description of flight characteristics adds to the likelihood of this being the case inasmuch as such as the rocket propulsion technology of the time did not have this capability unless someone can provide an example where it was deployed successfully that provides a stabilization heretofore unknown. I think this is a case of stretching the prosaic beyond it's limitations to apply rational logic to an event that defies it's application. The archivist will find many such examples from the ridiculous to the sublime in trying to fit a square peg in a round hole.

Hiya Rich, some cases get under our skins and that's fair enough. You have Socorro and I have Damon, Texas and that Wilcox report; all of which are plain intriguing. Where one lacks in diminutive folk, it gains by having more than one witness.

Would you mind posting a link to the video you mentioned? It sounds like something I must have seen and don't think I have.

Gildenberg may well have been entirely accurate in his recollection and the possibility that he had access to secret flight logs. If both of these points were accurate, wouldn't the flight logs include data relating to the location of where these test-flights with the helicopter took place?

Instead of certainty, he was clearly extrapolating from his recollection of the Voyager test flights, including two people in white suits, to explain the Socorro report.

Looking at the footprint of the Voyager shows us that, '(…) three footpads extended out 4.3 meters from the center of the Surveyor. The spacecraft was about 3 meters tall.'

Even without glasses, it seems a stretch to picture a scene with a 'small helicopter' suspending a 3 meter tall lander being mistaken for a single egg-shaped object.

Yes, K, it seems iffy, but does conform to the other information and data we've provided over the past few years.

It's corroborative -- somewhat, at least.

That's what makes the matter so interesting: like all UFO accounts there is always a "fly in the ointment."

And then there is that Indiana University engineer who was savaged by the UpDate listers when he said he recalled a magazine article from the 60s that told of a balloon flight that its (paper) company made, which had a mishap in the Socorro region -- 1964.

The logo of the company was like the Zamora insignia.

We've dealt with that at some length and spent a lot of time trying to track down the magazine article.

I talked with the engineer, and he seemed to be a rational guy who really read something pertinent.

But again, one more dead-end.

I don't see Socorro as an ET visitation or as a hoax -- too many details derail a hoax scenario for me.

And with other egg-shaped UFO sightings all over the place, one can't rule out an exotic sighting of something extraordinary.

Thank you so much for the Gildenberg youtube extract Rich.I followed and documented with others the Socorro case and the different hypothesis (prank, LLRV, Surveyor, Balloons, helicopter, Hugues "secret" model", etc) for our French UFO-Skeptic forum from 2009 now : http://ufo-scepticisme.forumactif.com/t787-le-celebre-cas-de-socorro-24-avril-1964

The log mentionned by Gildenberg is relativaly well known (I assume it is this one?) :

http://www.nmsr.org/wsmrlog.jpg

Allow me to point to an excellent source, reason of my humble intervention.It is probably one the more interresting discusion I followed about LLRV and Surveyor hypothesis, and it was taking place in the Reality Uncovered friend forum, where you will find "tons" of quotes and sources found mainly by the excellent Access Denied, or Serpentime forum users... Dunno if you followed it (?).

If not, read here and in extenso please, you will find many things regarding this hypothesis concerning LLRV or Surveyor + helico to forge yourself an opinion about its validity, bemols, invalidity, etc, that's very very interresting imho and in English:

"I admit that I'm a little behind in my Socorro knowledge, but who claimed that the object reached speeds in excess of 100 mph?"

Apparently Hector Quintanilla, of Blue Book was responsible for generating an estimate of about 120 mph.

However, an independent estimate is as follows: Zamora says the object flew away and eventually went out of sight by a landmark called Six Mile Canyon, about 5.8 miles away from where he was located. It may have taken as much as 20 seconds for Sgt. Chavez to arrive, and he didn't see the object. So, 5.8 miles divided by 20 seconds yields just over 1000 mph. This may be a case where--as in the Arnold sighting--he worked out speed based on the time it took for the object to fly past two given markers, and when the speed came out "too high" for credibly, it was arbitrarily reduced so it didn't sound so preposterous.

So take your choice, 120 mph or 1000 mph.

If anyone is interested, I could explain in great detail why a lighter than air balloon about 20 ft in diameter could not fly at either speed.

In short, it would take hundreds of horsepower just to move it, and the dynamic pressure of a 120 mph wind would shred it.

Gildenberg's comments are a classic case of a "drive-by" explanation. He matched precisely one detail of the case--two figures in white coveralls--and ignored all the other details that didn't match.

First of all, as he says, the helicopter crew in question was cleared to fly all over the White Sands test range. Socorro is not on the test range. You would have to postulate that the crew decided to break with protocol and left the range.

The Socorro landing site was inside the controlled airspace of the Socorro airport. Do you really think a professional helicopter crew would choose controlled airspace as the location to conduct an unplanned and unscheduled test, without telling the local cops?

The noise and dust signature of a helicopter do not match what Zamora described (see my previous posts).

Where did the blue "flame" come from? The spacecraft model hanging below the helicopter did not have rocket propellant on it, for safety reasons.

When the Air Force officer arrived from White Sands to investigate the case, the very first thing he did was to check the flight operations logs to see if there were any aircraft assigned to the range that could have been in the area at the time, and found none.

With regard to the Lunar Surveyor conjecture: no one seems to have figured out that, safety regulations would have prohibited the transportation of a spacecraft loaded with propellant to be off the White Sands reservation. The bi-propellant combination in the LS spacecraft was some version of Hydrazine and Nitrogen Tetroxide, both of which are massively toxic (not to mention highly energetic) chemicals.

There are only a few places in the country that are set up with the equipment and permits to deal with that combination of bi-propellants. (It requires personnel working around it to wear full "moon-suit" garments to prevent skin contact and inhalation. Simple white cloth coveralls don't cut it.) I suspect that White Sands Missile Test Range in the 1960s was one such place, but I wonder if anyone has researched that basic fact? In any case, the desert in and around the town of Socorro most certainly was not such a location.

The safety plan that the Lunar Surveyor test program would have had to file (required by NASA) would absolutely have prohibited carrying a bi-propellant loaded spacecraft outside of the permitted test area. Any helicopter pilots willfully ignoring that safety plan would risk being fired and separated from their flying privileges.

The hazard of dealing with what is essentially a fully-fueled bomb hanging 20 feet below a crewed helicopter is exactly why NASA didn't do it. The records show that all of the Surveyor tests that included live firings of Hydrazine-Nitrogen Tetroxide rocket motors were conducted either on tethers or on balloons (i.e., with the humans tucked safely behind thick-walled blast bunkers, hundreds of yards away).

The tests at White Sands were intended to test the radar of the Surveyor in its crucial, terminal landing phase, to make sure it would send reliable, accurate signals to the rocket motor controllers. The primary reason to go to a place like White Sands is to be in proximity to terrain that is a reasonable simulation of a Lunar landscape (fresh basaltic flows, with no covering vegetation), close to support services for helicopters, relatively radio quiet (so no RF interference), and free of people, buildings, and other high value "targets" that would prevent low-level flight operations.

It is easy to conjecture that the Socorro object was a balloon, a jet, a helicopter, or a rocket, when you don't think through the consequences of that conjecture.

“The description of flame as .. interpretation based on … association is … the root cause of the … inability to file this with confidence....”

Exactly. There are multiple lines of evidence pointing to the conclusion that the region of space where Zamora put the source of the blue light was actually the location of a high intensity nuclear radiation field.

Taking those lines of evidence in chronological order:

(1) First is Zamora’s detection of heat on his face that corresponded to the presence of the blue light at a distance of about 30 feet.

(2) Then there is testimony in one of Zamora’s later interviews, when he was being quizzed for more detail on what he saw, he described seeing the area of contact between the “flame” and the desert floor. He described seeing a flow of the blue energy from the object to the sand and as penetrating into the sand, not bouncing off it or flowing around it.

(3) Then there are the smoldering greasewood twigs and leaves directly under the center of where the object had been sitting, described by multiple witnesses in the few minutes after the object had departed.

(4) Then there are the first photos taken on the site a few minutes after the object had departed which were confiscated by the Air Force and never returned because they were “fogged”, compared to photos taken the next morning which showed no “fogging”.

(5) Then there were the examples of vitrification of desert sand and bubbling of rock which James McDonald verified a few years after the fact had been sent by the Air Force to an independent lab for analysis.

Taking those in reverse order, item (5) is interesting because sand vitrification and rock bubbling only occur as a result of exposure to heat transmitted by radiation, not by convection or conduction. You can't create this effect by turning a propane torch onto the sand for a few minutes. There are good physics reasons for this that I won’t go into, but this is why these effects were not generally known until after the first fission bomb test at the Trinity site. That was the first time that anyone had ever been able to create a nuclear radiation source intense enough to create those effects.

Item (4) is interesting because it indicates the presence of induced radiation; the object not only emitted intense, penetrating radiation when it was present, but also apparently created some short-lived radioisotopes with decay rates of a few hours.

Item (3) is interesting because it shows that the energy field directly underneath the object was intense enough to char living plants.

Item (2) is interesting because it shows that whatever the source of the blue light was, it was not really a flame. A flame is a bunch of flowing incandescent gas that is the result of combustion of a fuel and an oxidizer. It is actually an aerodynamic phenomenon. The interaction of the blue energy flow with the sand was not aerodynamic.

Item (1) is interesting because it shows that the blue “flame” was giving off its energy primarily in the form of radiation, not by convection or conduction.

In calculations I did a couple of years ago, I looked at the standard reference books on the effects of nuclear weapons and found that the radiant energy level necessary to cause charring in green plants and to cause the formation of bubbling in rocks is virtually identical. The degree to which that radiant energy level attenuates with distance is such that an individual removed by about 25 or 30 feet would feel it as moderate heat. Of these 5 data points, only #2 could conceiveably be explained as the result of an actual aerodynamic flame produced by chemical energy. The other 4 require an intense source of radiation. But, once you’ve got an intense radiation field, an aerodynamic flame becomes superfluous.

I'm would have to think that, as aphysicist, J. Allen Hynek understood the significance of this body of evidence and is why he described the Zamora case as the "Rosetta Stone" of UFOlogy.

"J. Allen Hynek understood the significance of this body of evidence and is why he described the Zamora case as the "Rosetta Stone" of UFOlogy."

Hynek was being prescient: if someone determines what the symbol/insignia meant that Zamora saw on the side of the craft, they would have the answer or explanation of what Zamora saw; a point we have been braying about for several years now, in many, many postings here and at the RRRGroup blog, among others.

You said : "The bi-propellant combination in the LS spacecraft was some version of Hydrazine and Nitrogen Tetroxide, both of which are massively toxic (not to mention highly energetic) chemicals."Good remark imho, but:

Reading the different documents figured and shared in the discussion I mentionned above in RUncovered forum, and if I'm correct, I understood "the outdoor" exercices with helico were to test the "radar" of the Lunar apparatus or several things not implicating "propulsion".

I then dont think there was propelant aboard in such "outdoors" flights. As in these tests, the verniers were not implicated and tested, it was in restricted areas when you read the documentation the propulsion and verniers were.As I understood the helico embarked a sort of "model" of the surveyor times to times...

Secondly, I have several times asked if people have pictures of such helico + surveyor apparatus, to reply or enlight us concerning the difference between the 4 traces in the terrain, despite Surveyor have three "feets" to be short. Because I doubt the apparatus made as if the Surveyor supported the weight of the helico when landing^^ If someone here have such documentations..

Notice I defend not or favorite in particulary the helico + surveyor pist to explain the case (Access Denied or ourselves have provided many bemols in our forum), but it must be well examined, scrutinized.

Larry,"Then there were the examples of vitrification of desert sand and bubbling of rock which James McDonald verified a few years after the fact had been sent by the Air Force to an independent lab for analysis.

Taking those in reverse order, item (5) is interesting because sand vitrification and rock bubbling only occur as a result of exposure to heat transmitted by radiation, not by convection or conduction. You can't create this effect by turning a propane torch onto the sand for a few minutes. There are good physics reasons for this that I won’t go into, but this is why these effects were not generally known until after the first fission bomb test at the Trinity site. That was the first time that anyone had ever been able to create a nuclear radiation source intense enough to create those effects.

Item (4) is interesting because it indicates the presence of induced radiation; the object not only emitted intense, penetrating radiation when it was present, but also apparently created some short-lived radioisotopes with decay rates of a few hours."

Sgt. David Moody's report: "Sgt Chavez then went to the area where the craft or thing was supposedly sighted and found four fresh indentations in the ground and several charred or burned bushes. Smoke appeared to come from the bush and he assumed that it was burning, however no coals were visible and the charred portions of the bush were cold to the touch."

Investigator J. Allen Hynek added, ". . . the burning seemed to be sporadic. Clumps of grass in close proximity to the burned ones were untouched, while others just a short distance away from the unburned ones were again burned.